


what matter, weighty words

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, bed snuggles, post 5x07, post-proposal chats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 10:49:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13386240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: In which Jemma fills the first moment of quiet, and Fitz gets another chance.





	what matter, weighty words

“Fitz.”

She keeps her voice low, not wanting to disturb those resting around them. The Zephyr is large, but not large enough for all those it shelters here in the future; people have carved out living quarters in the corridors and closets, bunking down wherever there’s space. Daisy, in fact, is asleep in the hallway outside the room. She and Fitz have been granted an actual bunk only as a special dispensation. Her fingers move, unconsciously, to the dressing on his side, checking to make sure all is as it should be.

Fitz shifts beneath her, his arm tightening around her shoulders. His voice is quiet, too. “Mmph. You checked it before we came in here. It’s hardly had time to go wrong.”

“Sorry.” Cognitively, she knows that, but Fitz is the one place her mind doesn’t always hold sway. Returning her hand to his heart, she counts several steady beats before trying again. “Fitz?”

This time he only makes a noise, the soft creak in the back of his throat that means he’s barely clinging to wakefulness. For a second she considers staying silent—if anyone deserves a full night’s peace, it’s him—but these opportunities come infrequently at the best of times, and no one would call their present circumstances ideal. She doesn’t want to waste any time they have. None at all.

“It does matter that you proposed to me first, doesn’t it?”

Her head bobs as he takes a deep breath. “No. No, of course it doesn’t.” Double negatives make a positive, that’s what her English teacher used to say—not that she can’t tell from his voice that he’s not telling the whole truth. When she doesn’t respond, he sighs. “I’m going to marry you. You’re going to marry me. That’s what’s important.”

She closes her eyes, basking in that fact: she and Fitz are going to be  _ married _ , to have matching rings and lives forever, officially. They’ll be everything she had dared to dream they could, because they’ll be  _ together _ . Fitz’s whiskers pull the hair at her crown when he smiles. “I’m happy to let you be the one to actually ask the question.”

“Then why did you argue with me about it three times?”

He shifts uneasily. “That’s just us, Simmons. You know how competitive I am.”

“No, that’s me.”

“Case in point.”

She huffs, pushing herself up against his chest until she hovers over him and he can’t escape the sharp edge of her care. “I’m serious, Fitz. I know it matters to you. I don’t—I never want to make you feel like what’s important to you isn’t important to me.”

“You don’t,” he objects, and his hand covers hers over his heart so quickly that she can’t disbelieve him.

“All right,” she says, relieved enough to drop back beside him and return her head to his shoulder. “So why, then?”

The quiet between them stretches, but doesn’t grow thin; Fitz’s thoughts make enough noise, clattering around his brain, and the stroke of his thumb against the back of her hand stirs up all the depths of their love.

“I’d been thinking about asking you for a long time,” he says finally.

Biting her lip, she barely keeps from telling him she knows—this isn’t the time for that conversation. “I would have said yes for a long time,” she says instead. “Years, really.”

His hand tightens briefly around hers. “I wasn’t so sure. Not that—I mean, I didn’t  _ really _ think you’d say no, but you know how things go with us. And the cosmos.”

“Ah, yes. Our curse.”

“No, but that’s just it.” He takes a deep breath, then pulls his arm gently from under her head, carefully rearranging their limbs in the narrow bunk until they lie facing each other, foreheads pressed together and hands entwined between them. “While you were here and I was waiting—again—there was a lot of time for, you know,  _ reflection _ .”

“Oh dear.”

His forehead wrinkles against hers. “Fortunately, six months—”

“Six months!”

“—is long enough to go through all the stages of questioning and come to a conclusion. And I did. You can’t—I mean, if one takes all the evidence into consideration, the cosmos having a vendetta doesn’t go far enough.”

“Not to mention it’s entirely unscientific.”

“Do you want to hear or not?” he asks without heat. She kisses his thumbs in a silent promise. Mollified, he continues. “There we were, separated again by God knows what, and I couldn’t help wondering how we were going to get out of this one. Sometimes...sometimes I didn’t think I deserved to get out of it.” He offers her a one-sided smile, rueful and self-deprecating, and she frees one hand to smooth out the other side. “Anyway, I realized at a certain point that I never considered not trying everything I could to come back to you. To find you, and never leave you again.”

“I heard that part,” she says gently.

“So.” He shrugs. “You got the important part. I just wanted you to know that—that I know we’re stronger than anything the cosmos can throw at us, and I don’t intend to let it beat us again. And that I want this, us, as much as you do.”

He meets her eyes across centimeters, but he’s built a bridge through galaxies and centuries, and she loses her breath for a second at the sheer wonder of it. Of course it mattered that he had proposed first. Of course he wanted her to know everything he meant in marrying her. In the midst of escaping and fighting and proposing, she hadn’t truly heard what he was saying before: he was never leaving her again. She knew—she had always known—that whatever her future would bring, Fitz would be there; fifty years in the future or seventy years in the past, she never wanted to be without him. In proposing, he promised that she never would be. “Is that what you said?” she asked, once she was sure she could speak.

“I mean, more or less. I had a speech, but—”

“Of course you did.” She laughs, using the back of her hand to wipe away a tear that had attempted an escape down her cheek. “I’d like to hear it. Will you ask me again?”

“I was going to save it,” he says, “but, if you really want—”

“I do.”

So he holds her hands tenderly in his and whispers his request so fervently, it sounds like a vow. And so it is.

They are quiet when he finishes, he having said all he has and she having given her answer before she knew he asked the question. Finally, he chuckles. “And then I told you not to play it so cool you didn’t answer, because I thought my heart was going to fall out of my mouth.”

She laughs too, his worry a joke in light of what’s happened since. “It’s for the best I didn’t hear you, then. All your careful preparation would have been in vain when I answered.”

“So—you would have—”

“Oh, Fitz!” She takes his dear face in both hands and kisses the apples of his cheeks and the tip of his nose and the corners of his mouth. “I would have said yes, a thousand times.”

“Okay.” He nods, a grin spreading across his face. “Good. Good to know. Not, as I said earlier, that it makes much difference in the long run, but—”

“But,” she says. “It matters to me, that you asked first. And if anyone wants to know the story, that’s what I’ll tell them.”

“You don’t want to be the one to propose first?” he asks, eyes alight. “That’s not like you.”

“Well,” she says, kissing him again before nestling back in the circle of his arms, “no matter who asked, we both win. In the long run.”

In response, he kisses her hair and holds her tighter. Neither of them feel a need to speak again. The love thrumming between them drowns out the settling Zephyr’s creaks and moans, and says all that needs to be heard. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, guys, it's been awhile. I missed you!


End file.
